The practice of replacing missing teeth with man-made prosthetics dates to at least as early as 700 BC, when the Etruscans made dentures from human or animal teeth. The first truly artificial teeth, made using porcelain, were first devised around 1770, and a British Patent for artificial teeth was granted in 1791 to De Chemant.
Since then, improvements in the design and manufacture of dental prosthetics have included the use of new materials, such as synthetic polymers and carbon fiber materials, as well as new methods of treatment planning. More recently, prosthetics have advanced from the traditional surface mounted denture, to the use of permanently mounted implants surgically inserted into the underlying jaw bone, and onto which an artificial tooth or set of teeth can be mounted. These implants provide a number of advantages, including improved stability, better fit, and greater comfort.
Along with the development of improved prosthetics have been advances in the planning and delivery of replacement teeth. For example, recent methods of treatment planning include the use of imaging data to produce a virtual treatment plan, for example, Simplant® computer software as referred to in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0059665 (Orentlicher et al.).
Virtual treatment planning systems are typically used to direct the fabrication of a surgical guide. For example, in the NobelGuide™ system, treatment planning software outputs are sent to a remote facility where a surgical guide is constructed by sterolithography techniques. In another exemplary embodiment, the virtual treatment system allows for replication of the titanium blank which is later utilized to build the improved prosthetics therefrom. The completed surgical guide is mounted in the patient's mouth and used by the dental surgeon to guide a surgical drill in order to form holes into which the implants are placed.